Entertainment
29 August, 2025
Celebrate the best of tropics
A FLUORESCENT fantasy of texture, sound and subversion will take over Tank 4 at the Tanks Arts Centre this Cairns Festival, as Fever Dreams transforms the gallery into a surreal, sensory playground of contemporary art.
Running until September 7, the free large-scale installation features four of Far North Queensland’s most dynamic visual artists.
Key events of the festival include:
Friday, August 29 – opening night on The Esplanade from 5.45pm
Saturday, August 30 – aerobatic display at 4pm, grand parade at 5.30pm and fireworks at 7.30pm
Sunday, September 7 – Carnival on Collins from 9am.
Hans Ahwang, Jamie Cole, India Collins and Melania Jack will each bring a distinctive perspective to the dreamlike collision of aspiration and reality from pop-art mixed media to soft sculptural, sound and digital art forms at Tank 4.
For Collins, who works primarily with recycled materials, the concept offered a chance to interrogate deeper social constructs that lie beneath the region’s curated tropical identity.
“The acting curator at Tanks Arts Centre, brought us together with this vision of exploring life in the tropics, but the deeper themes of consumerism, curated identities and social constructs emerged through our process,” she said.
“Each of us brings a different visual language, but there is a strong shared thread questioning what lies beneath the surface.”
Collins’ contribution, ‘Temple of False Gods’, draws on this theme through a tactile, evolving installation created from discarded textiles and household items.
“My work is a response to the consumer culture we are all caught up in, often without realising it,” she said.
“Temple of False Gods uses recycled textiles and discarded materials to question what we worship in our everyday lives and whether those things are really serving us.”
While Fever Dreams invites introspection, the experience continues just outside the gallery with Fever Lounge, the festival’s social hub nestled under the iconic fig tree near Tank 4.
Open from today to Sunday (August 31) and Wednesday to Saturday (September 3-6) from 4pm to 8pm, the Fever Lounge invites visitors to relax with a drink, connect with friends and soak up tropical DJ sets under the trees.
Cairns Mayor Amy Eden said the Cairns Festival program continued to evolve, with 2025 showcasing one of the most diverse line-ups yet.
“Cairns Festival continues to be the biggest event on our city’s calendar and we are excited to see such a celebration of our local arts community in this year’s program,” she said.
“I am especially excited for the launch of Fever Dreams and the Fever Lounge, something fresh and bold that runs the entire duration of Cairns Festival.
“It’s edgy, it’s different and it’s thought-provoking. Not only that, it introduces us to the work of four incredibly talented local artists and is just another example of how Cairns Festival continues to support creative opportunities in our region.”
Adding to the visual arts offering, She Shed will host two hands-on mosaic workshops, one on the afternoon of Friday, August 29 and another on the morning of Saturday, August 30.
These ticketed sessions invite women of all ages and abilities into a welcoming, female-only space to design and craft individual mosaic pieces that will form part of a larger collaborative artwork to be unveiled at a later date.
The region’s creative talent will also be on display as part of the Cairns Festival Art Studio Trail, a self-guided tour running across Sunday, August 31 and Monday, September 1.
Nearly a dozen local artists will open their studios between 10am and 3pm, offering visitors a chance to see works in progress, hear about creative processes and purchase original artworks spanning contemporary painting, ceramics, sculpture and more. Visit the website for information on participating studios and locations.
Cairns Festival kicks off today and runs through to Sunday, September 7.
For more visit https://bit.ly/3HOE5Lb
